Louisville Welcomes Back PrideFest and Opens LGBTQ+ Center
After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the Greater Louisville Region is proud to bring back its LGBTQ+ celebrations this year. On September 17, Louisville Pride Festival – or PrideFest 2022 – will take over the city, welcoming the entire LGBTQ+ community and its allies to celebrate together. It follows the Southern Indiana Pride Parade & Festival that also returned for the first time since 2019.
The event, taking place on Bardstown Road in the Highlands, will feature two stages of entertainment highlighting local musical, theatrical and drag acts. There will also be over 100 vendors in attendance, DJ’s, a Family Zone featuring Drag Queen Storytime, a Wellness Zone, the Derby City VIP Lounge area, food trucks and so much more. The street will be shut down from 11 AM to 11PM that day so that residents and visitors can be loud and proud in a safe and celebratory environment.
Leading up to the event, the city is also excited to have opened its first dedicated LGBTQ+ center since the 1980s. Louisville Pride Foundation inaugurated its Pride Center this June, coinciding with Pride events nationwide. This new space will host game nights, screenings, classes, and other events for the city’s LGBTQ+ community.
To discuss all these exciting things happening in Louisville we sat down with Mike Slaton, the executive director of the Louisville Pride Foundation which produces PrideFest and manages the new LGBTQ+ center.
Vacationer: Hi Mike! Thanks for joining us.I have to say Kentucky isn’t necessarily the first place many would think of for an LGBTQ+ Pride celebration so we are thrilled to see PrideFest return for its 6th year. What do you think has contributed to its success?
Mike Slaton: Well, we started the Louisville Pride Festival in 2015 and we really have been blown away by the support and interest since then! I think the community is always hungering for more things like this. And then with the political environment that developed in 2016, there was a renewed urgency, I think, for a lot of people to show their support for the LGBTQ community as well as to be connected with and be part of that community.
Vacationer: How diverse is the queer community in Louisville?
Well, it’s hard to say. It’s sort of hard to compare it to others, we are a hard population to measure, but I can say definitely with the Louisville Pride Festival it’s a very diverse turnout and with the Center, we’re serving a very diverse population. A big part of our work is to help break down those barriers within our community and make sure that people of color, trans people, parents, seniors, people with disabilities are included in what we’re doing.
That’s wonderful to hear. What programs and services does the Center offer to the community?
So, the goal with the Center is in threefold:
One is to be a safe and affirming gathering place for LGBTQ people and our friends and family.
The second piece is to be a backbone organization for the community. So, for groups and individuals that are doing work or starting groups that want to serve the community, we want to be here to support them to help make sure that people don’t burnout. When somebody is leading something and it’s time for them to step aside, we will help maintain continuity and really just support all the great work that’s happening in the community.
The third part is to be a point of entry for services. Many of the services that people need exist out there already in some way, shape or form. But for LGBTQ people, there are barriers to accessing them, or they’re hesitant to access them. A lot of times there are things that are offered through churches or community ministries, and even if the church is affirming to LGBTQ people, they may have some past trauma that just makes them unable or unwilling to access that sort of service. So, rather than reinvent the wheel, we want to close the service gap and either bring those services on site or be a referral agency to help get people connected to those services. That would include things like financial counseling, a small-scale food pantry, we’ve done legal clinics/ name change clinics, clothing swaps, mental health counseling. We’ll do HIV testing. We’re gonna do vaccinations and things like that. We are looking to provide all those services that people need and make it a little bit easier to access them.
Fabulous! And is there anywhere that readers can donate to help you guys?
Yes, they can go to our website and donate there.
Awesome. So, with Louisville PrideFest fast approaching- what is your favorite thing about the event?
You know what? One other thing about it that I’ve always found kind of pleasantly surprising is it’s such a mixed crowd, in terms of ages, gender, race, but also so many straight allies and friends and family. It’s a very mixed and open crowd and it gives us a chance to connect with people that you don’t always get a chance to reach out to. That’s one of the things I love about the most.
To learn more about the Louisville Pride Foundation, Pride Fest and the new LGBTQ+ Center head on over to louisvillepride.com.
